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Photo: Slaven Vlasic / Getty Images
Dan Stevens is a man with many masks. He was a dashing aristocrat in Downton Abbey, a very competent killer trained in L & # 39; guest, a monster with a heart of gold The beauty and the Beast, and he's currently playing an ultra-potent and mentally unstable mutant in FX Legion. Even if you're a fan of all the above, it's still easy to lose track of the connective tissue between the roles that Stevens takes because he soaks himself in each of them. (And he was literally immersed in this fluffy suit and CGI makeup as Beast.) For the new movie Apostle, which begins to air this week on Netflix, Stevens is once again transformed into a raging drug-addicted priest who is sent on a mission to rescue his sister from a cult living on the island. What he discovers upon arrival is a place that looks like the strange island of Wicker Man, but dirtier and more primitive – and the semblance of normality much less convincing.
Apostle is Gareth Edwards' first feature film since his spectacular action, The raid 2 (The equally impressive sequel to the epic film of the director-writer, The raid: redemption. But where these films are elegant marathons made up of infinite martial arts centerpieces, Apostle is an anaerobic slugfest, and in the center is Stevens, Thomas Richardson, who was stabbed, thrown to the ground, tied up and slightly shredded to offer Evans the turn-of-the-century piece, Folk-Horror. tale to life. In discussing this with him, Stevens seems in a good mood. He likes to wear coats and bowler hats to do his own stunts and feel the biting cold of a Welsh night on his skin while he gets bludgeoned by heretics. He also told us what it was like to be covered with crushed bananas for days and how he made sure to protect his spine during these fight scenes.
I was so excited to see something new from Gareth Evans because I'm so fond of Lowering movies.
I was delighted to be able to work with him. I was talking to him before about another film that we have not shot yet. In the meantime it happened, and it was very exciting to work with Gareth on his first English film. I think he's the only director born in Wales who has never been to Indonesia before. [laughs]. So yes, I'm a big fan of the Raid and The raid 2and when I discovered that they were made by a boy who grew up in the Welsh valleys and not by an old Indonesian master, I was blown away. Then I realized we were about the same age and that he was crossing New York one day where I lived there. We went for a pint together and I sat down to hear him talk about shots.
It's a very good one to launch something that is entirely based on a sequence that he has in mind, and from that sequence, he is able to communicate the passions and the story in all meaning. So he was talking about this crazy sequence for this other movie and I thought, "My God. This guy is someone with whom he will clearly be incredibly fun to work with. I'm going to learn a lot about filmmaking and the specifics of the story, image by image, "which I think talented filmmakers can do and focus on. So we plunged into that.
My first introduction was L & # 39; guestso I was really happy to see you doing something really aggressive in the movie. I remember when I became aware of Downton Abbey and thought, "It's the same Dan Stevens ?!
I love both, and this has been exciting in recent years, it's an opportunity for people to realize that it's okay to do both. It's really where I live, it's in this kind of surprise. Doing some of the things that Gareth wanted to do in this film surprised me how much we sometimes went. Right now, a lot of good things are coming out of South Wales, and Gareth is right behind them. I am a very big Welsh ophile.
You engage in a crazy fight with a man wearing a wicker mask. His death lair houses a human-sized meat grinder. How was it?
Yeah. I lose several numbers, but he loses part of his face. So who's laughing now? He is an incredible character, the Grinder, a kind of pulp creature with a basket-head and bleeding. It's an incredible movie for sequences on tables in a way. There is the purification table, then the Grinder is a little more like an erase table. And then the character of Lucy Boynton exposed me on his table and that of the prophet Malcolm and it is either extreme kindness or total annihilation.
I loved the fact that this Grinder character only wears sensitive pants and that awful headdress.
I'm just wearing pants, like winter Welsh winter in the spring, where it's never quite next summer, you know?
So you do all these dangerous things and Gareth is meticulous about his shots. How is the preparation of these really brutal scenes going?
Oh, he approaches these sequences knowing exactly what he wants, and it's almost like our involvement, you can do anything because you've repeated and choreographed it. So, the exhaustion that you might feel starting at the end at one time, you can actually hit those little shots saying, "Okay. What I just need in this plan is that his head hits the table. So we do it 100 times or whatever it is and cover it up with more fake blood and a confusing banana, which, after three days of filming the sequence, really started humming and the baseness of the scene took over. Is amplified. The stench and blood intensified.
Sensational. It seems immersive.
It was nothing compared to the tray, as I affectionately called it, that I had to crawl.
Is this where you crawl into the extremely narrow tunnel filled with dirty water and human parts?
Yeah. It was a low point – the temperature and everything else. But the carpenter was really special because it was a bit like watching a master filmmaker at work, and learning how hard it was to make each scene rather than throwing himself on that man at the basket head and try to look like you win It's a beautiful choreography and it's not always comfortable, but it feels like. He feels strangely secure because he is in such a controlled environment, as stinky as he is.
If you connect to a movie with the Raid dude, I guess it's because you want to live an intense full game experience.
Yes, because that's what I want to bring to a director who fascinates me so much. For example, I see how much he invests in it and how much he believes in what he is about to do. I want to stay stuck like he really is, just as a fan and out of respect for his work and how I feel when I watch his films. I want to bring something quite intense and epic. It's really fun, and we're already talking about the next thing we're going to do, because it's such a joy to work with him and he's just – for someone who makes movies as bloody and horrible – he is so sweet, gentle, kind and generous man. It is a formidable opposition. I guess he's content with everything in his job and that he's laughing. He is laughing. We will shoot a particular shot, and it will be perhaps the bloodiest, the most gory, the sequence, and it will be of course the kind "Oh, it's adorable", with a kind of laughter slowly.
While you are covered with blood and you feel very bad.
I'm covered with bananas, soft and bloody bananas running down my face.
Do they actually use fruit for that?
Oh yes. Someone would come with a giant brush between two takes and just spread another layer. And it's gone!
The folk-horror mystery of that reminded me a lot of The wicker man.
There is really a little bit of The wicker man, a bit of Ken Russell Devils in there. And I think there is something blackish about this stranger who comes from outside the city and comes on a secret mission. There is almost a bit of Shane Gareth was constantly talking about wanting to do a Welsh western. It is a project in development. Let's say it this way. We will see how that happens. There will probably be another film in between, but there is something in the tone of these films that we both like and it is really strange to see that kind, this tone applied to this landscape.
Since you are not an action star trained in martial arts, have you ever had to alter combat scenes by making them more worthy of what mortals can do?
To be honest, in terms of action, I really appreciate being able to do as many stunts as possible physically, more and more very physically. I thought, "Gareth, my spine is not folding that way. In reality, no human could do it. Well, of course could do it if the guy who was attached to it did not care about his spine, but I guess you do it. He said, "Yes, I do Dan. I want your spine. And he really cares about my spine, I believe. And body temperature was another conversation. You know, it's pretty cold in Wales and some of that water was not heated, but the banana was nice and hot.
It sounds like a Hollywood-recommended spa treatment, smearing you with fluffy ripe bananas while you're shirtless in the icy cold.
It was a diaper, and at this point you will take everything you have. Pasta banana? Awesome. Just spread it out.
This interview was edited and condensed.
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